I stood in the kitchen Saturday afternoon just hugging my husband, unwilling to let go. Not crying, not hysterical, just hugging. He'd returned from the base for the day with a date. The date. You know, the one that just makes your shoulders sag with acceptance and dread? Yeah, that one. He'll be gone again soon, very soon. As we embraced, CNN was on in the background as yet another dictator was being fired upon by UN allies; I briefly wondered how many families were being affected in the same way by the news (worry and anxiety about their loved ones) and how many were just going about their days with only a brief glance (or none at all) at the news.

His deployment was moved up, not by weeks but by months. At this point, it may be several months longer than normal, we don't know. It threw a lot of our plans out the window, not the least of which was to get pregnant. We tried, but the option to get pregnant naturally before he leaves is officially gone now, and all I feel is numb. We want a baby so bad and now we wait, again.

What bugs me most is that I was just starting to feel married. I finally felt like my husband belonged here instead of just visited often - we had dinner together (though it was often at 9pm), went to sleep in the same bed most of the time, spent weekends together when he was home. It felt like our new normal and damn it, I liked it. I thought I had a few more months, but now I find myself transitioning back to survival mode, work on me mode, and I'd forgotten that the first part of that is numbness. Weird. I'm an emotional person and this numbness is something I just don't like. I understand it, but I don't like it. I keep thinking that I'm not ready to go back to that deployed state of mind, but I don't exactly have a choice now do I?

I'll just soak up the minutes long hugs while I can, I suppose. We've done this before and we can do it again.

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